I will try to keep this brief. Our state bee association submitted a number of honey samples to have the pollen content DNA sequenced. We are getting the results back now and I am wondering how best to convey this information to our members. There were some surprising (to me) results, so I asked Dr Heather Matilla for her thoughts and she advised me not to rely too heavily on the pollen content as a determinant of the bees' foraging behavior. So I've spent the last week going down a rabbit hole of melissopalynolgy studies. Most of these papers were examining the pollen through microscopy, not DNA analysis. Depending on what the authors were investigating, some would exclude non-nectar producing plants from their results, some did include these sources.

This is not meant to be a rigorous scientific study. I want to be able to present this data to laypeople in the most accurate way possible, without making unwarranted assumptions. A lot of windborne pollens are appearing in the results for instance. I have read about the ways "anomolous" pollens can find their way into honey but it seems like a cop out to just call it "contamination." Does anyone have any experience/thoughts on this?

I have attached an image to give you an idea of what I'm talking about (note: don't get too hung up on the common names, this is a work in progress).

thanks
Scott 
Johnston RI

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